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Cisco Internet Business Solutions
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Telework
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Cisco Internet Business Solutions
Achieving Higher Levels of Federal
Group Employee
(IBSG)
Productivity, Inclusion, and Environmental Sustainability
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Cisco Internet Business Solutions
Group (IBSG)
Authors
Albert Cho
Alan Balutis
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ite Paper
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Cisco Internet Business Solutions
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Cisco Internet Business Solutions
Group (IBSG)
May 2011
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White Paper
Telework
Achieving Higher Levels of Federal Employee Productivity, Inclusion, and
Environmental Sustainability
The U.S. Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 generated tremendous momentum toward
increasing workforce mobility options for federal employees. The Act paves the way for the
federal government to unlock significant benefits, including greater productivity, resilience,
environmental sustainability, and employee inclusion. It creates accountability for achieving
these objectives in the form of Telework Managing Officers (TMOs), senior officials responsible
for telework policy development and implementation.
Realizing these objectives will require a significant departure from current practice. To date,
agencies have focused on increasing telework participation rates through advertising,
employee training, and resolution of technological barriers. Meaningful progress toward the
Act’s other goals—including emergency readiness, energy use, recruitment and retention,
performance, and productivity—will require moving past first-generation strategies aimed at
increasing telework participation rates and, instead, pursuing integrated mobility strategies
explicitly linked to agency business objectives.
TMOs should not view the Act as just another administrative burden that requires compliance. As
the first TMOs assume their roles, they have a unique opportunity to use workforce mobility—
including telework and a broader range of tools and systems to enable productivity anywhere,
anytime, and on any device—as a catalyst to create a more flexible, productive, and inspiring
federal workplace. Achieving this vision requires a sober assessment of the current situation, an
ambitious, goal-driven strategy linked to agency business objectives, and a new management
posture aimed at transforming mind-sets and behaviors rather than resolving technological
challenges. In this paper, the Cisco® Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) offers initial
perspectives on each of these issues.
Mobility in the Federal Workforce: A Work in Progress
The most comprehensive fact base on mobility in the federal workforce comes from the U.S.
Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which collects agency data used to prepare annual
reports to Congress. These data have limitations: the most recent are from 2009 and suffer from
quality challenges described in OPM’s most recent report. We believe inferences based on
these data must be treated with caution and some skepticism. Nevertheless, OPM data provide
the official multiyear fact base for understanding the state and trends of telework in the federal
government, and highlighting these inferences will help agencies understand the importance of
consistent reporting over time. As reported, the data suggest that despite progress, telework in
the federal government remains a work in progress:
●
●
Rising participation: good news / bad news. While overall federal telework
participation has increased markedly in recent years, it is still below 2005 levels, and
ineligibility for telework has increased each year since 2005.
Agency telework adoption varies widely. This is true even accounting for agencyspecific differences in eligibility of roles.
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●
Organizational and cultural issues are the key barriers to broader workforce mobility
in the federal government, not technological or financing issues.
Rising Participation / Declining Eligibility
The 2010 Status of Telework Report to Congress cites a “general, albeit small, increase in
participation across federal telework programs.” Table 1, excerpted directly from this report,
demonstrates increases in telework participation across the federal government.
Table 1.
Telework Participation Highlights.
Source: U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2010
Closer analysis reveals a more complicated story. We disaggregated these data and placed
them in a time series using OPM data from 2005 to the present. Two important messages
emerge from these data. First, while telework has increased in recent years, it is recovering from
a multiyear decline and remains below levels reached in 2005. Second, while the percentage of
eligible employees actually telework is growing, this is due mostly to a sharp decline in the
number of telework-eligible employees—a trend that is not readily apparent in the OPM report
to Congress (see Figure 1).
Declining eligibility could be an artifact of data quality issues or a reflection of changing eligibility
criteria in agencies over time. Perhaps a more systematic review of roles and responsibilities has
led to a realization that previously eligible employees cannot telework effectively or that certain
roles are not appropriate for remote access. But given significant improvements in technology
and practice, the political momentum behind telework, and growing telework penetration rates
in the private sector, declining eligibility seems suprising and deserves greater scrutiny at the
agency and subagency levels.
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Figure 1.
Telework Is Increasing, but Elegibility Has Dropped Precipitously.
Sources: U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2010; Cisco IBSG, 2011
Agency Adoption Varies
Cisco IBSG’s analysis further underscores wide variance in telework adoption across agencies.
Figures 2, 3, and 4 illustrate some of the most significant differences among agencies (using
2008 data from last year’s report due to data gaps at the agency level in this year’s report). They
show substantial variations among agencies in eligibility, participation, and frequency of
telework activity:
●
●
●
Eligibility. OPM statistics suggest that in eight of the16 agencies with more than 10,000
employees in 2008, more than 90 percent of employees were eligible for telework. In five
other agencies, however, less than 50 percent of workers were eligible for telework.
Eligibility differences are partly due to varying agency missions, but likely also reflect
dissimilarities in management attitudes toward roles.
Participation. No large agency reported more than one-third of eligible employees
actually adopting telework arrangements. Several environmental and social services
agencies (Environmental Protection Agency, Transportation, Interior, Social Security,
Health & Human Services, and Veterans Administration) achieved adoption rates of more
than 20 percent, but in the rest of the larger agencies, 10 percent or less of eligible
employees exercised telework options.
Frequency. Disaggregation of the number of teleworkers by telework frequency shows
wide variation among agencies. In most agencies, the majority of teleworkers worked
remotely just once a month, but some agencies such as the Social Security Administration,
Treasury, and Justice had significantly higher rates of frequent and regular teleworkers.
Some of this variation is natural and mission-driven, given the broad range of different functions
and responsibilities agency employees fulfill. However, the substantial variation in participation
rates also suggests that cultural and organizational factors have played a major role.
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Figure 2.
Agencies Vary Significantly in Employee Telework Eligibility.
Sources: U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2010; Cisco IBSG, 2011
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Figure 3.
Frequency of Telework Among Employees of Federal Agencies Is Surprisingly Low.
Sources: U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2010; Cisco IBSG, 2011
To the extent these data accurately reflect underlying practice, they suggest the existence of
widely different “segments” or “profiles” of teleworkers. In many agencies, the majority of
teleworkers work remotely just once a month. In others, the majority do so on a weekly basis.
These employee segments are likely to have different interests, objectives, and mobility
requirements, suggesting the need for mobility programs that address the range of different
telework use cases and profiles in a given agency.
Organizational and Cultural Issues
OPM data also suggest that the most significant barriers to telework are organizational and
cultural rather than technological or financial. As Figure 4 shows, the three most significant
barriers identified by OPM respondents were the need for office coverage, management
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resistance to telework, and organizational culture. Technology-related challenges, such as IT
security and IT funding, lagged far behind. The relatively slow adoption of telework and the
consequent failure to realize the benefits of mobility are issues of organization and personnel
management, not of technological maturity.
Figure 4.
Agency Organizational and Cultural Issues Are the Most Significant Barriers to Telework;
Promotional Strategies Have Focused on Training and Marketing.
Sources: U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2000 and 2010; Cisco IBSG, 2011
Office culture cannot be altered with the stroke of a pen; it will take time and effort to develop new
coverage models, address concerns about performance evaluation and recognition for remote
workers, and help managers understand the trade-offs involved in expanding telework options
for their employees. Solutions currently being implemented by agencies—such as training for
managers and employees, and increased marketing—can only incrementally increase
telework participation unless managers and employers are trained to think differently about
roles, relationships, and performance.
Shifting Focus to Business Objectives
The U.S. Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 asks agencies to report not only changes in
telework participation rates, but also the contribution telework is making toward key business
objectives—in particular, “emergency readiness, energy use, recruitment and retention,
performance, and productivity.”
To realize these potential benefits of workforce mobility, agencies need to move from firstgeneration strategies focused on increasing telework participation rates to more
comprehensive approaches directly linked to agency business objectives. The rationale for
integrating mobility plans into agency strategy rather than treating them independently is that
agencies have multiple business objectives, which in turn require different approaches to
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mobility. Ensuring continuity of operations, for example, may require a set of mobility tools that is
different from what’s needed to increase inclusion and diversity in the workforce.
For TMOs and agency leadership, the key message is that mobility planning must evolve to
become a strategic element rather than an independent process focused on increasing
telework participation. A brief examination of several business objectives makes the importance
of integrated planning clear:
●
●
●
●
Productivity, satisfaction, retention. Perhaps the most obvious rationale for an
aggressive telework strategy is to increase employee productivity, happiness, and
retention. The OPM survey demonstrates that teleworking employees are clearer about
work expectations, have higher job satisfaction, and are less likely to express an intention
to leave than respondents unable to telework. Cisco IBSG research also suggests that for
every 60 minutes employees save on commuting, they work an extra 40 minutes. Firstgeneration strategies work well here; by making more employees eligible, advertising
telework, training employees, and removing technical obstacles, agencies can unlock
significant gains in employee performance even if telework is casual, infrequent, and
irregular. Inclusion and diversity. Providing flexible work options, including the ability to work
remotely, can support agency objectives related to diversity and inclusion. Cisco
research has established that mobility tools can help older employees stay engaged in
the workforce—an important consideration, given that nearly 25 percent of the federal
workforce is near retirement age.1 Flexibility is also important for other demographic
groups, including the disabled and working parents of both genders. Achieving inclusion
and diversity objectives with mobility tools requires investment in careful program
planning, design, and implementation to ensure that agency efforts adequately target
and meet the needs of relevant populations. The telework profile of target employees
might involve more frequent and regular telework, more intensive technology needs to
support persistent access, and richer (potentially video-enabled) collaboration tools to
permit more robust communication and connection with peers. Continuity of operations (COOP). Federal agencies already recognize the importance
of incorporating mobility into COOP planning: OPM data suggest that 72 percent of
agencies already incorporate telework into their COOP plans. However, a mobility
strategy for COOP will look different from a traditional telework promotion plan. It will
require identifying critical functions, training selected employees, running scenario
exercises, and investing in resilient infrastructure, such as virtualized desktops that can run
securely on any device to ensure continuity in crisis scenarios. In some cases, resilience
planning might not require accommodation for frequent, casual telework at all, instead
creating a persistent, “always on” technological capability to deliver highly secure remote
access only when required to support continuity of operations. Energy use / sustainability. Telework can help lessen energy consumption in at least
two ways: by reducing the amount of transportation required, and by decreasing space
and utility requirements at the office. A mobility strategy that increases the frequency and
regularity of telework can enable office reconfigurations to reduce the amount of square
footage per employee, decreasing (and potentially eliminating) office space and, in turn,
saving real estate costs, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions. Agencies have already
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experienced successes in meeting this objective; an oft-cited statistic is that the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office has saved US$11 million in office leasing costs by
aggressively promoting telework.2 Since transportation emissions decrease as telework
increases, this business objective might require accommodation only for casual,
infrequent telework. But realizing sustainability gains from downsizing real estate
footprints would require shifting a meaningful population of employees to regular,
ongoing telework, necessitating an appropriate technological and policy infrastructure.
These examples demonstrate the degree to which complementary but separate policy
objectives generate different technological and policy requirements that might not be
addressed by a focus on increasing casual telework participation rates. A policy of encouraging
telework across agencies is a “no-regrets” move, but it is insufficient to achieve significant
progress toward the business objectives outlined in the Telework Enhancement Act. To unlock
the true benefits of workforce mobility, TMOs and agency leads must embed mobility within the
broader context of agency strategic planning, not treat it as a separate management silo.
Implications for TMOs and Agency Leads
In recent years, federal agencies have made tremendous progress in reversing a sustained
decline in telework participation. The objective of creating a more productive, inclusive,
sustainable, and resilient federal workforce remains a work in progress. The Telework
Enhancement Act has dramatically improved the odds of success by creating TMOs
responsible for telework policy development and implementation in every agency.
The first cadre of TMOs faces an exciting—and daunting—opportunity to create lasting impact
in their agencies. They should interpret their roles broadly, to include not only the promotion of
traditional telework arrangements, but also the development of mobility strategies that
contribute meaningfully to agency business objectives such as productivity, inclusion, resilience,
and sustainability. They should additionally address the diverse mobility objectives of different
segments of the employee population. Doing so will require engaging agency leadership on a
range of different topics to develop an integrated plan:
Develop the fact base. How does telework participation in this agency compare with
participation rates in comparable organizations in the public and private sectors? Which role
categories or subagencies have the highest and lowest telework rates relative to eligibility?
What are the key market segments and use cases within the employee base, and how
intensively do they hope to use mobility options?
Articulate ambitious business goals. What are the agency’s goals related to productivity,
inclusion, resilience, and sustainability (and any others relevant to the organization)? How can
mobility enable achievement of these goals, and how can progress be measured?
Identify a portfolio of approaches. Identify a range of initiatives to implement and monitor
over the next one to three years. These might include:
●
●
Activities designed to increase general participation in telework (e.g., increased marketing
and manager training, and standardization of policies and tools)
Activities designed to serve specific mobility-related business objectives (e.g., identifying
strategies to keep older employees engaged by implementing mobility-enabling
infrastructure solutions)
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●
Ambitious, transformational pilots that are high-risk but potentially high-reward (e.g.,
alternative financing models for employee telework equipment; transitioning an entire
subagency or office, such as finance or legal, to flexible work options)
Tailor these approaches to different user profiles. Develop a limited set of easy-tounderstand “packages” for teleworkers based on different anticipated levels of frequency and
intensity, with tailored agreements, infrastructure recommendations, and best practices for
each segment
The Telework Enhancement Act provides the federal government with an exciting opportunity to
reshape the workplace around mobile norms and practices. Successful implementation will
enable the federal government to make substantial progress toward its business objectives and
become more productive, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable.
For more information on the mobile federal workforce, please contact:
Alan Balutis, Public Service Practice
Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group
Phone: +1 202 354 2946
Email: abalutis@cisco.com
Albert Cho, Director, Public Service Practice
Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group
Phone: +202 354 2937
Email: albcho@cisco.com
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the substantial contributions of Paul Brubaker to the
development of this paper.
Endnotes
●
●
U.S. Office of Personnel Management, FedScope,
http://www.fedscope.opm.gov/intro/start.asp
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,
http://www.uspto.gov/about/offices/cao/TeleworkAnnual09FINAL_Section_508.pdf
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